LinkedIn and Twitter Lab

Helen BuzduganUniversity of Manchester

26 January 2011

at #asml11

• Ways of using LinkedIn and Twitter withstudents – helping you to help them!

• Some ideas from me and hands-on practice• Sharing our ideas, experiences and tips as we

go along• Time for questions!But won’t be covering…

Careers Service’s ‘corporate’ social mediaaccountsFacebook

Objectives

Where are you on the social medianovice to guru scale?

A) I wouldn’t know a tweet from a twit!B) I know a bit about Twitter and LinkedIn but

haven’t really used them muchC) I’ve joined fairly recently and created my

profiles and started to try a few thingsD) I’ve been using these for a while now and am

pretty competent, but feel I could always learnmore

E) My colleagues call me the Careers Service’s“social media guru”!

How can social media help usin our work?

Can we map different web tools and socialmedia against career developmentlearning tasks?

Career DevelopmentLearning Tasks

TRANSITIONS(APPLICATIONS)

SELF OPPORTUNITIES

DECISIONS

DOTS ModelTony Watts& Bill Law

5 CDL Tasks1. Improving self-awareness

(skills, interests, values,motivations etc)

2. Researching opportunities(types of work)

3. Making career decisions4. Finding opportunities (e.g. job

search)5. Application process (CVs,

interviews etc)

Selfawareness

Researchingopportunities

Careerdecisions

Findingopportunities

Applicationprocess

Guidanceinterview ● ● ● ● ●CareersWebsite ○ ● ○ ● ●

RSS feeds ○ ● ○

LinkedIn ● ○ ○ ○Forum ○ ● ○ ○ ●

Facebook ○ ○ ○

Twitter ○ ● ○

Blog ○ ● ○ ○ ●YouTubevideo orpodcast

○ ● ○ ○ ●Social

bookmarking ○ ● ○ ● ○

How I use social media

GET LATEST NEWS,

EVENTS &OPPORTUNITIES

POLLPEOPLE’S

VIEWS

GET ANSWERSTO BURNINGQUESTIONS

SHARE GOODPRACTICE

LABOUR MARKETINTELLIGENCE

FORM AND JOINCOMMUNITIES

FIND OUT WHATOTHER CAREERS

SERVICES ARE DOING!ENGAGE

WITHISSUES

MAKEUSEFUL

CONTACTS

• Competition to win a paid fashioninternship at Elle

• Opportunity to win 4 shows as presenteron the Hits radio station

• Live Q&A on Twitter on ‘The Future ofCharities’ with the CEO of the RNID

• Article about the future of careers servicesin the Times Higher Ed

Latest news, events andopportunities - Twitter

Sharing good practice• Discussion threads in the LinkedIn ‘UK HE

Careers Professionals’ group about instantmessaging guidance, social media, dealing withstudents’ expectations

• Asked my local media contacts on Twitter ‘Whatdo you think of unpaid internships?’

• Set up Twitpoll to see what smartphonesstudents use

Polling people’s views

Labour market intelligence -LinkedIn

• Find out what types of organisationsemploy people from a computationallinguistics background

• Research career trajectories – how dopeople get into a CSR role

• Coming soon… viewing your graduates’1st & 2nd destinations – ‘Career Explorer’tool

Get answers to burningquestions

• “Do you use case studies as part of yourgraduate selection process?” Question toAGR LinkedIn group

• Within one hour, managed to find two localprofessionals for an employer panel forPolitics students via Twitter

Make useful contacts

Engaging with issues

LinkedIn – ‘Facebook forProfessionals’

• 90+ million members in 200 countries• 5+ million in UK• A new member joins every second• BUT only 9% of University of Manchester

students/grads use LinkedIn frequently orsometimes, compared with 94% for Facebook(Survey of 747 students/grads, 2010)

Twitter• 106 million users worldwide

(but not all are regular, active users)• 50% of users are 18-34

(so students and graduates are a keygroup)

• BUT Only 18% of University ofManchester students and grads usedTwitter ‘frequently’ or ‘sometimes’(March 2010)

Two ways of looking at these stats

1. “Hardly any students use Twitter orLinkedIn so there isn’t much point usengaging with this yet.”

2. “Twitter and LinkedIn are really valuabletools for students’ job hunting andnetworking, plus having a strong,professional online presence isincreasingly important, so let’s see howwe can encourage more to engage.”

Some ways I use LinkedInwith students

• Exploring job roles – what job titles are there in x andwhat organisations do people in x work for

• Researching career trajectories to see how people getinto a desired role

• Identifying organisations to target (by sector orlocation)

• Researching organisations – e.g. what sort of peopledo they employ, where do they have offices

• Identifying contacts to target for ‘informationalmeetings’ or work experience

• Developing contacts for working overseas• Unlimited potential…

6 of my favourite thingsabout LinkedIn

1. You can see who your 2nd and 3rd degree contacts are2. You don’t have to already know people to start building

your network on LinkedIn3. You can keep in touch with people even when they

change jobs (or we can keep in touch with studentsafter guidance appointments and see what they dowhen they graduate…)

4. There’s no blurring of personal and professional – it’sALL professional

5. You can dip in and out of it as you need to(but the more you put in, the more you get out)

6. Is it 6 degrees of separation, or just 3…?

Scenario 1 – Identifyingorganisations

ScenarioA student wants to get some publishing workexperience back home in Brighton over thesummer and wants help with identifyingpublishers to target. They’ve tried the usualGoogle search but not got too far.

LinkedIn taskDo an advanced company search, using theBrighton postcode BN1 2RE and sector‘Publishing’. What would you then suggeststudents do with this list?

Scenario 2 – Researchingorganisations

ScenarioA student has an interview with an organisation calledArmstrong Learning, and wants to find out more aboutthem.

LinkedIn taskDo a basic company search for ‘Armstrong Learning’.Look especially at ‘insightful statistics’ and profiles ofemployees. How could you/students use this data?Experiment with searching for other companies. Can youfind any big graduate recruiters?

Scenario 3 – Identify contactsScenario

A student is considering a career in football coaching. Yousuggest identifying some contacts in your area for‘informational interviews’ initially.

LinkedIn taskDo an advanced people search using the keyword ‘footballcoach’ and select the sector ‘Sports’. Look at the availableprofiles and see if you can identify any suitable contacts.NB: If you can only see job titles in your search results, lookfor relevant sector groups to join first, to give you access topeople’s full profiles.TIP: Try joining ‘UK Sports’ and/or ‘UK Sports Network’, asyou don’t have to wait for approval to join these groups

Scenario 4 – Researching an area ofwork and career paths

ScenarioA student is interesting in doing something to do withequality and diversity but doesn’t know what roles exist andwhat organisations might employ such people.

LinkedIn taskDo a people search using just the keywords ‘equality anddiversity’ and perhaps location ‘UK’ to find UK specific jobs.Look at people’s profiles. What different jobs have theydone? Who did they work for? What did they study etc?NB: Again, you might need to join a relevant group to viewfull job profiles here, but otherwise just look at their basicprofile to get an idea.

Joining LinkedIn groups• Joining groups is essential for students to

expand their network of contacts• Can automatically view most profiles of (and

send message to) people in same groupTips:• Useful to join groups to show students on your

profile• See if groups are UK specific• Look for high membership groups• Change your settings for the group to ‘weekly

digest’ or de-select the Digest email box

Most common questions fromstudents

• What can I put in my LinkedIn profile asI’m ‘only a student’?

• How can I make contacts on LinkedIn?

Get started with LinkedIn

• Complete your own profile as fully as possible• Join some relevant groups (can join up to 50)• Join in some group discussions• Find some of your own students or recent

graduates on LinkedIn as examples• In my experience, students need to be shown

how to search LinkedIn for contacts,organisations etc (so it helps to be familiar with itfirst)

How students can contactpeople via LinkedIn

• Check if the person has a Twitter profile(if so, consider making contact via Twitter first)

• Check their contact settings for ‘expertise requests’• Usual networking rules apply!• Approach more junior people first, not CEOs• Ask for advice initially; perhaps an ‘informational

interview’ – can lead to work experience and perhapseven a job

• There is a word limit for messages to anyone who is nota direct contact (e.g. group contact) – a short paragraph

• Also consider starting discussion in a relevant group

LinkedIn – useful groups to join

Types of groups include:• Careers professionals groups• Graduate recruiter/business groups• Local/regional networking groups• University alumni groups• Sector specific groups• Company alumni groups

LinkedIn – useful links

• Refer students and graduates to:http://grads.linkedin.com (5 useful short‘getting started’ videos)

• Example student profile to show:www.linkedin.com/in/samuelroutledge

Twitter – the basics and a bit more…• Tweeting (use a link shortener like http://tinyurl.com to

shorten long web links)• Searching• Following people• Lists – try following

www.twitter.com/helenbuz/lists/careers-people orwww.twitter.com/helenbuz/lists/careers-services

• Retweets (RT)• Using hashtags (#) e.g. #asml11• Replies (@) and direct messages (DM)• Directories• Polls – see http://twtpoll.com/udj5hz• Hootsuite

Twitter scenario

A student is interested in getting intomagazine publishing and she is keen toget some work experience and find outmore about opportunities. In what wayscould she use Twitter to help her?

• Follow people and organisations that tweetpublishing jobs using the Twitter searchfunction for keywords or by a #, Twitterdirectories (e.g. www.twellow.com andfollowing other people’s lists.

• You can help your students by setting up listsfor different sectors and encouraging studentsto follow them.E.g. www.twitter.com/helenbuz/publishing-careers

Suggestions – part 1

Suggestions – part 2• Follow people working in publishing. Observe

them for a while and see what sorts of thingsthey tweet about.

• Retweet interesting things and comment on theindustry news – try to sound like a“professional in development”.

• As you start to build up a following join inconversations.

• If you have a blog, link to that and yourLinkedIn profile, and feed your blog posts ontoTwitter so that people following you on Twittercan see examples of your ideas and yourwriting.

*NEW* Fusing social networkingand job search

• The job search engine Simply Hired(www.simplyhired.co.uk) connects withyour Facebook or LinkedIn contacts toshow you if you have any contacts (even2nd or 3rd degree) in organisationsadvertising vacancies

Opportunities

• Instant information onanything

• Communication withanyone anywhere

• Everyone can be apublisher

• More things possible every day

Opportunities and Threats Threats

• Information overload

• 24/7 ‘always on’ cultureand erosion of privacy

• No quality control– hard to assess validity

• Pace of technologicaladvance can overwhelm

ContactHelen BuzduganCareers Consultant, with special responsibility for web and

interactive technologies)MLP, Careers & Employability DivisionUniversity of Manchester, UK

• Email: helen.buzdugan@manchester.ac.uk• Phone: +44 161 275 2828 (careers switchboard)• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/helenbuzdugan• Twitter: www.twitter.com/helenbuz• Slides available at: www.slideshare.com/helenpownall